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Ben Hanlin opens up about daughter’s sepsis battle

Ben Hanlin’s baby daughter’s feet were going blue as she battled sepsis.
The ‘Dancing On Ice’ star rushed home to be with his wife Briony and Delilah, seven months, after fears she had contracted the terrible condition two weeks ago.
He said: "It was two weeks ago. I was at a gig, I was just about to go on stage when I got a call. My wife called an ambulance, and I was like, ‘Right, I’m coming home.’ I said to the gig I was doing I can’t do this gig. I got in the car and as I pulled up there was an ambulance on my drive. They came in, took one look at her. They took a look at her mottled skin. Delilah was six or seven months, she was 103 degrees. We’d taken all her clothes off but she was struggling to breathe. Her hands and feet were going blue and the paramedics said, ‘Right, we gotta go.’ … In the house, the paramedics went, ‘We think this is sepsis because it’s got the signs of sepsis.’ So they wanted to treat it as seriously as they can. I’ll be honest, I knew zero [about sepsis]. It’s not been on my radar and the worst thing you could do when you’re sat in hospital, and I was sat there I started googling it, and you go, ‘This is serious.’"
However, Ben’s daughter Delilah is thankfully recovered now and his wife Briony encouraged him to continue with ‘Dancing On Ice’ despite the health scare.
Speaking on ITV’s Loose Women, he said: "’Dancing on Ice’ is on every Sunday live, and all this was happening on the Thursday. I stayed over in the hospital and in the morning, me and Bryony had a chat. She was stable by then, and Bryony went, ‘Well there’s nothing you can do here, go to training and then come back.’ We did that for a bit, and I was on the ice training but not really with it because I hadn’t really slept or anything. Then she came out on Saturday night, and then I woke up Sunday morning and was like, ‘We’re happy, she’s happy at home. Go and do the show and then come back.’ … I did ok that week, weirdly. You get to a point where you think, ‘I’m on the ice, I’m gonna try and smile through it.’"